Most conversations start pretty much the same around here lately. “Are you picking your olives this year?” or “Have you started picking your olives yet?” Everything else grinds to a halt as the locals scramble to pick the small green and black fruit in the few short weeks of olive picking season.
The minimum harvest accepted by the local co-op is 400 kg. Deliver as many sacks of olives as you can carry and just a few weeks later you’ll be swimming in the most amazing organic, virgin-pressed olive oil (azeite) you’ve ever tasted. Picking is slow, tedious, hard work. The economics of picking olives by hand make no sense in this day and age but that doesn’t stop the local harvest. This is truly a labour of love.
Our twelve olive trees are dripping with fat, ripe olives and I’ve picked enough for my first attempt at brine curing and marinating table olives. In five or six weeks the bitterness will be gone and (hopefully) we’ll be left with enough exquisite black olives to last the year. Friends and neighbours have agreed to help harvest the rest in exchange for a few litres of golden azeite.
Let the picking begin!
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PS: Obrigadinha to daisyfae, Penfold and KPX for their comments and sharing their remembrance on Bygone.
How I wish I was close to you for this! Yummmy is all I have to say while thinking of this delicatie!
I’m almost at the point where I can’t stand the sight of olives … but I can’t wait to taste the olive oil!
holy crap. you have your own olive trees??!?!? you are making olive oil? whoa… that’s just cool! (yes, i don’t get out much)
Cool? Most definitely. Crap? Only sometimes when the branches are too high to reach …
ooh ooh ooh was going to ask about the coop – fantastic!! will you have enough? that is so exciting.
Ooh ooh ooh! This year I’m just testing the waters (well, oils and olives) so that we’ll be prepared for a full harvest next year. (By we I mean I). Rumour has it this year’s yield is 12% — what the hell would we do with 48 litres of olive oil??
That put’s my little olive tree to shame, mind you it is only a baby, so maybe one year… when I’m too old and arthritic to pick them.
Judging by what I’ve seen around here old and arthritic makes the perfect olive picker!
Mmm. Yummy olives. Can’t wait. Spit. Ag. Bleugh. (xxx)
Oh just wait, you’ll be begging me for olives one day … (xxx)
If you run out of the little darlings you could raid the TG’s best friend’s grove ……
[I do apologise for Penfold's manners - I tried my best - unfortunately he liked being beaten with a stick]
Ooooh, imagine how bitter anything from that grove must be … YUK!
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